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DO WE NEED IT? 
WHAT IS IT? 
CAN WE GET IT? 



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REV. li. FAY MILLS. 



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DO WE NEED IT? 
WHAT IS IT? 
CAN WE GET IT? 



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REV. B. FAY MILLS. 



An address delivered at the Ninth International 
Christian Endeavor Convention. 



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Entered according- to Act of Congress in the year 1890 by 

FLEMING H. REVELL 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C, 



POWER FROM ON lUGU. 

DO WE NKl-:!) n? WHAI' IS 11? 

CAM wi: (;i:r 1 1? 

Our topic as it will be divided, will 
have reference, ^rs/y to the necessity for 
the Powder from on high; second^ to its 
character; and t/ih^d, to the conditions 
of its attainment. In other words. Why 
do we need it? What is it? and, How 
may we get it? 

There are three classes of people, and 
only three, w^ho are Christians, in the 
church of Christ. The first class are in 
the church because they want to be saved; 
and what they mean by being saved is to 
get some sort of an entrance into what 
they call heaven. They are not at all con- 
cerned about the salvation of other peo- 
ple. There is another class of people 
who are concerned about their fellow men, 
but they believe that the way to bring 
them to God is by using such means 
as may lie in themselves, with wisdom 



4 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

and discretion, for this purpose. These 
people have a good deal to say about the 
latent power that exists in the church of 
God. There is no such thing. There is 
no power, latent or expressed, in the 
church of God. Power is just as distinct 
from the church of God as steam is dis- 
tinct from the engine that it moves, or as 
life is distinct from the earth that seems 
to bring it forth. 

The third class of peopie are those 
who realize this and have learned that 
"Power belongeth unto God," and that it 
is only as we have power from on high 
that we have spiritual power at all. 

In the early days of the church's his- 
tory, all the disciples belonged to the 
third class. The promise that the Spirit 
of God should be given to these disciples 
meant a definite thing to them. It meant 
nothing less than this: that the impossi- 
ble should become possible, and that 
they should have power for whatever they 
were given to do. They knew what the 
Holy Ghost and power of the Holy Ghost 
meant. It meant "The power that had 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 5 

made psalmists and prophets and law- 
givers;" it meant the power that had 
caused Moses to break the chains that 
bound the enslaved people of God; it 
meant the power that had enabled Joshua 
to lead them in triumph into the promised 
land, and had stayed the sun and moon at 
his word of command until God had giv- 
en the victory to Israel ; it meant that 
which had been as a coal of fire from off 
God's altar to Isaiah ; it meant that which 
made the sword of Gideon the sword of 
Almighty God; it meant that which made 
the word of Daniel mightier than the 
word of a king and a thousand of his 
lords. And they had need of some such 
power as this. The task that had been 
given them was a hard one — nay, it was 
an impossible one. As Arthur has said 
in his Tongue of Fire, it was a new re- 
ligion and a poverty-stricken one, without 
a history, without a priesthood, without 
a college, without a patron. It had no 
presses; it had no literature; it had none 
of our modern means of influencing mass- 
es of men. It was cast solely on the one 



6 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

instrument oi the tongue, and in that re- 
spect it was destitute of the wisdom of 
the Greek and of the skill of the scribe. 
It was seldom favored with an opportun- 
ity of addressing the same congregations 
or the same individuals. It was destitute 
of prestige; it was contemptible in num- 
bers; ^ it was rustic in manners and 
thwarted by circumstances. With only 
its two sacraments and its tongue of fire, 
on it went, and on, overturning its enemies 
and advancing the name of the Lord, 
from the day when, in the upper chamber, 
that little band heard the sound as of a 
mighty rushing wind, and down from 
heaven, through the roof, came tongues of 
fire that rested upon them. Their em- 
blem was a tongue of fire — man's voice, 
God's truth; man's speech, God's inspira- 
tion ; a human agent and the divine pow- 
er. And this power was adequate for their 
impossible task. It was able to trans- 
form these disciples, w^ho, before they 
received it, were as timid as sheep, until 
they were as brave as lions. "It had pow- 
er to make the man who trembled at the 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 7 

word of a maid-servant until he had de- 
nied his Master, charge home upon the 
rulers of the Jews, the murder of Jesus, 
until they cried in deep concern: 'Men 
and Brethren, What shall we do?'" 

I do not think I ever realized the mean- 
ing of this emblem of fire until I thought 
of it in connection with the great fire 
which I witnessed in the city of Boston. 
I remember on that awful night, standing 
on one of the busiest corners of the whole 
city. A boy at school, I had come into 
the city and had passed under the ropes 
which held the crowed back from the fire, 
and I stood near the place where the flames 
were rapidly destroying one of those great 
buildings. I remember how the fire came 
to the corner of the street, and how it 
seemed as if it had no power to go far- 
ther. There it was, playing with the 
building, while it burned out the wood- 
w^ork that was in it. But on the other 
side of the street all was dark and dead. 
There seemed to be no ray of light 
and no spark of fire. Then suddenly, 
almost without warning, this mighty force 



I 



8 POWER PROM ON HIGH. 

overleaped the street and the building on 
the other side burst into flames ; and then, 
just as when a match is touched to the 
shavings that fill the stove, with a great 
roar the fire swept through the block of 
stone and brick and iron until it melted 
at its touch. It seemed as though in a 
few short moments the heart of that city 
had vanished at the touch of this awful 
element. This is the emblem that is given 
to the church of God — the tongue of fire. 

Was this power needed only for primary 
conquest? Was it a special gift designed 
for the founders and the founding of Chris- 
tianity? Can God's work now be suc- 
cessfully pros-ecuted without it, and are 
we now to depend on human wisdom, hu- 
man learning, human experience and hu- 
man energy? Has the day of miraculous 
spiritual power passed by? Can any in- 
fluence in this day of our great advance- 
ment reach men — can it penetrate minds, 
can it search hearts, can it burn dross, 
can it melt prejudice, can it consume sin, 
can it refine character — save the touch of 
the fire that fell on Pentecost? Do we 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. Q 

not say, "No, there is no other influence," 
with our lips, while we say, "Yes" with 
our lives? Do we not pray as tliough we 
were dependent upon the Holy Ghost, and 
then live and plan and work as though we 
were dependent only on ourselves? 

I am an optimist of the optimists. I 
believe there has never dawned upon the 
church of God a brighter day than this 
upon which we are here assembled; but 
I believe that when a church door swings 
open, when a prayer is offered or a song 
is sung or a sermon is preached, and these 
things are not inspired by the Spirit of 
God, they are useless. Nay, more, I be- 
lieve that they are a curse. Churches mul- 
tiply and ministers increase, but the shin- 
ing face and the burning tongue are far to 
seek and hard to find. Some one has 
well said that on the day of the Pente- 
cost one sermon converted three thou- 
sand souls, but that today it seems as 
though it took three thousand sermons 
to convert one soul. We have our ca- 
thedrals and temples and tabernacles and 
churches and chapels; we build our sem- 



lO POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

inaries and colleges and schools and asy- 
lums and hospitals, all in the name of Je- 
sus Christ. We have the wisdom of the 
ancients with the genius and the energy 
of the nineteenth century. No people ever 
sat better clothed, with better brains, and 
listened in their churches to words of 
more profound wisdom than we of today. 
We have our pray nights and our play 
nights, and a society for almost every pur- 
pose under heaven. We found our Young 
Men's Christian Associations; and then 
in a few short years it seems in many a 
place as if they had turned to the purpose 
of culturing men's bodies, rather than 
saving their souls. The great Christian 
Endeavor movement springs up in a 
night; and yet there are many spiritual 
souls that thank God for all that has been 
done and is being done by this great move- 
ment, that are tonight in deep spiritual 
travail that the work which God gives you 
to do as a society may be made and kept 
spiritual in all its aims and methods and 
developments. We have our vast mission- 
ary equipment, so that today six thousand 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. II 

missionaries of Jesus Christ have been 
telling the story of the cross; but still 
Ethiopia stretches out her hands in vain 
unto God, and the heathen in his blind- 
ness bows down to wood and stone. The 
church of God needs something, the 
church of God must have something more 
than she has today, with all her prestige 
and all her energy. She needs the upper 
chamber, she needs the tarrying at Jerusa- 
lem, she needs the power of the Holy 
Ghost, she needs a continued Pentecost; 
and nothing less than this can bring to 
her the slightest possible particle of power. 
If Christianity today is independent of 
the Holy Ghost, let us state it plainly. 
Nay, let us state the contrary. "If there 
were a religion today that had the doc- 
trines and all the ordinances of the New 
Testament and yet without the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost, it would not be 
Christianity; " it would be something 
else. What is needed is che power 
that came at Pentecost to speak to men in 
their own tongues, until you can touch 
the proud man and the sensual man, the 



12 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

weak man and the avaricious man, as you 
speak to him in the words of the tongue 
that came at Pentecost. 

There is no more fallacious saying than 
that "Truth is mighty and must prevail." 
Truth is not mighty. Men crucified the 
One who justly said: "I am the Truth." 
No word of our own poet was ever truer 
than when he said that truth was — 

** — forever on the scaffold, 
Wrong forever on the throne, 

Yet that scaffold sways the future. 
And behind the dim unknown 

Standeth God within the shadow. 
Keeping watch above His own.'* 

The power is not in the truth. The 
power is not in the Bible. The power is 
in God, as manifested to us by the Holy 
Ghost. — "The sword of the Spirit" is the 
sword of the Spirit^ and without the Spir- 
it's hand it is as useless as any other 
handless sword. Nay, more, it will be 
turned against the impious hand that 
touches it save in the power and mission 
of the Holy Ghost. 

And yet God has not left Himself with- 
out witness. "The eyes of the Lord run 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 1 3 

to and fro throughout the whole earth to 
show Himself strong in behalf of them 
whose heart is perfect toward Him," and 
He has found such people. He found 
that man, Luther — Oh, how He looked 
through those dark centuries until He 
found him; and when He found him, He 
took this man and hurled him like a 
thunderbolt until He had brought to noth- 
ing the might and the wisdom of the 
impious blasphemers and hypocrites of 
that day. God looked for such a man in 
England until he found John Wesley, and 
gave him his half a million — nay, his tens 
of millions, of souls for his spiritual con- 
fidence in Jesus Christ. God looked for 
such a man until he found Whitefield — a 
man destitute of much, but having a voice 
that was used as God's voice, and the 
tongue of fire touched and burned and 
melted men until, by the tens of thousands, 
they turned unto God. He looked for 
such a man until he found Finney. There 
was a time when Mr. Finney came into 
one of the factories at New York Mills, near 
Utica. As he came near the place where 



14 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

two girls were employed trying to mend 
a thread they began to laugh. As he 
came nearer, they began to cry and could 
not go on with their work, their hands 
trembled so. This man of God came 
nearer to them and they sank down upon 
the seats before them, while the tears 
rained down their faces, so mightily were 
they convicted of their sin by the power 
of the Holy Ghost. Others were touched 
by the sight. The proprietor of the mill, 
who was present, though an unconverted 
man, said to the superintendent; "Stop 
the mill; it is more important that our 
souls shall be saved than this factory 
should run." The gate was immediately 
shut down, and the work stopped. A 
great and powerful meeting was held in 
the place at once and there that day, by 
the spiritual contact of the presence of 
that man of God, there were three or 
four hundred souls crying out: "God be 
merciful to us sinners." 

When I was a pastor, one of my parish- 
ioners was the venerable Dr. Labaree, 
who was for many years president of Mid- 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. I5 

dlebury college. He told nie that fifty 
years ago, when he was a boy in Phillips 
academy, at Andover, there was a young 
man there who was so stupid that he could 
not pass the examinations. He staid there 
until some of his fellow-students had gone 
out and taken the college course and come 
back to the theological seminary across 
the way. And yet that young man, so 
stupid that he could not be admitted to 
any college in the land, had more spiritual 
power than all the rest of the students that 
were in the academy with him. He had 
no thought but of God, and he was filled 
with x\lmighty God. After a while the 
professors thought that, as he seemed so 
consecrated, they would put a parenthesis 
around the college and take him into the 
theological seminary. They thought 
that perhaps he would have a natural 
taste for systematic theology, church his- 
tory, Hebrew and all the rest of it; but, 
poor fellow, it was all Hebrew to him. 
And yet that man in the theological sem- 
inary was used to do more for God than 
all the theological students and all the 



l6 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

professors and all the ministers and all 
the church people in all the town of An- 
dover. He went down to a little factory 
village and started a Sunday School, and 
there thirty or forty people turned to 
God. He started another, and there a 
score or more of people came to Christ. 
He went over to Lawrence and founded a 
Sunday School in that city that I believe 
to-day has grown to be a flourishing and 
powerful church. When the time came 
for the students to leave Andover for their 
summer vacation, there came a sum- 
mons from a place in New Hampshire — 
no; it was not from a place; it was from 
one woman. She said. "lam the only 
person in this town that believes in God. 
We have no Bible; we have no Sabbath, 
and we have no God. Can you not send 
some one to us from your seminary who 
will preach to us the word of life?" No 
one of the students wanted to go, except 
this man, and he thought it was just the 
thing for which he had been waiting. The 
professors did not know whether to license 
him or not; but they finally concluded 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 1 7 

that he could not do a great deal of harm 
in six months, and so he was licensed for 
six months and sent into that town. He 
died soon after; but — and I give you this 
on the word of President Labaree — he did 
not die until he had won to Jesus Christ 
every man and woman and child in that 
township with the exception of one man, 
and he moved away soon after. 

The question that concerns us in this 
connection is this: Are these exception- 
al cases, or are they given to us as 
examples? Here is what the greatest 
preacher said: "I am the least of the 
apostles; I am not meet to be called an 
apostle because 1 persecuted the church 
of God ; but by the grace of God I am 
what I am, and that grace which was be- 
stowed upon me was not in vain, for I la- 
bored more abundantly than they all ; and 
yet not I, but the grace of God, which 
was with me." And this apostle says to 
us to-day: "God is able to make all grace 
abound toward you, that ye always, hav- 
ing all sufficiency in all things, may 
abound unto every good work. " 



1 8 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

The next question concerns the charac- 
teristics of spiritual power. What is it? 
It is nothing less than the life of God 
manifested through human character. 
There is no power that can create life ex- 
cept life; and this power finds its great- 
est exemplification in the life and words 
of Jesus Christ. He spoke those words 
two thousand years ago, and they have 
been sown and re-sown a million times, 
and yet they are vital for the production 
of life to-day. His power consisted in His 
consecration. It consisted in the fact that 
He came not to do His own will but the 
will of Him who sent Him, and so it 
pleased the Father to be glorified in the 
Son. This is the One who has said to us: 
"Greater works than I have done shall ye 
do," and "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My 
name that will I do." "Without Me 
ye can do nothing," — not something, 
not little; "Ye can do nothing.'' Paul 
says: "I can do all things, through 
Christ, which strengtheneth me." "As 
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself ex- 
cept it abide in the vine, no more can ye 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. IQ 

except ye abide in Me." The Holy Spirit 
IS not a freak of the Divine nature. He 
is the Divine nature itself manifested in 
power, in proportion as God is manifest- 
ed in character and in life. Andrew Mur- 
ray, one of the most spiritual writers of 
our time, has well said; "We want to 
get possession, of the power and use it. 
God wants the power to get possession of 
us and use us. If we give ourselves to 
the power to rule in us, the power will 
give itself to us to rule through us.'' The 
soldier joins the army not to get power 
but that the nation* s power may be man- 
ifested in him and through him. There 
is no more distressing sign at this day 
than that so many people are ready to 
stand up in their places — consecrated peo- 
ple in a measure — and say : "I want to 
be used." It may be just as cursed an 
ambition to want to be used as to want to 
have money or to want to have one' s pride 
fulfilled. What you and I need to have as 
an ambition is not to be used, but to be 
filled. The highest place is not that of 
the busy servant; it is that of the waiting 



20 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

servant; it is that of the standing servant 
Elijah used to call himself the standing 
servant of God. "As the Lord God liv- 
eth, " he would say, "before whom I stand." 
In the Oriental countries to-day, princes 
or men of wealth, will have at least one 
servant who always stands erect in his 
master's presence, in order that when he 
speaks the servant need not even arise in 
order to be ready to do his bidding" 
Elijah meant that he never sat down 
in God's presence, in order that when 
God spoke he might run with the greater 
celerity. If I were a merchant with such 
a business that I had to employ several 
errand boys, I should not regard that boy 
as the most helpful or effective, who was 
continually leaving his place and running 
to me with the request that I should use 
him. The thing that I would want from 
those boys would be that they should be 
ready to do what I told them to do — noth- 
ing more and nothing less. If they tried 
to do more, or even wanted to do more, 
they would be as harmful as though they 
wanted or tried to do less. 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 21 

"The strong man's strength to toil for Christ, 

The fervent preacher's skill, 
I sometimes wish; but better far 

To be just what God will. 
No service in itself is small, 

None great, through earth it fill; 
But that is small that seeks its own. 

And great that seeks God's will." 

You may remember the story of the 
blowing up of the rocks that were in the 
channel called Hell Gate, in the East Riv- 
er, that separates Long Island sound from 
the ocean. General Newton worked for 
years and years until at last he had the 
cavern made and stored with explosives, 
and the line, the magic wire, run from the 
explosives to the bank. Then, sitting 
upon the bank, he called to him his 
daughter Mary, a little child two years of 
age, and taking her upon his lap he told 
her to press that magic button. The lit- 
tle girl put forth her hand and pressed 
upon the button at her father's word, and 
instantly there came the mighty sound, 
the upheaval of the earth, and rocks 
and water, and the channel was par- 
tially free. Helplessness itself was that 



22 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

4ittle maiden, but power itself was the 
father on whose knee she rested. Oh, 
child of utter weakness, if thou wouldst 
but place thyself within the Father's 
love, the Father's thought, the Father's 
plan, then indeed would the Father's 
power flow through thy weakness until 
thou shouldst rend the rocks of pride and 
prejudice and passion; and even the gates 
of hell should not prevail against thee. 

We come now to the very last question, 
and I beg of you to listen to it : How 
can we get spiritual power? We cannot 
GET IT. No man ever possessed it; no 
man ever owned it; no man ever used it. 
It is a question, not of our getting power, 
but of God getting us; not of our us- 
ing God, but of God using us. The dis- 
ciples were not told to pray for power nor 
to seek for power. They were told to 
wait for the Holy Ghost. We know that 
they waited for ten days and then the 
Holy Ghost came. What did they do in 
those ten days? What does "waiting" 
mean? I wish you could have seen us as 
we waited at Gardner, Massachusetts, for 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 23 

our train — the excursion train, that was 
half an hour late. We stood upon the 
track, a score or more, and looked down 
the iron rail to see if the train was not 
coming. If you had asked some of us to 
go across the street to get a hundred dol- 
lars, I do not believe that we would have 
done it. We would not move; we must 
stay there; we were doing just one thing, 
and it is the one thing with which we 
cannot do anything else — we were wait- 
ing. The most intense occupation in 
the universe is to wait. To wait for the 
Holy Ghost is, not to do nothing, but it 
is to wait, — not having the possibility of 
anything else touching the mind with any 
allurement; it is to wait for God. Some 
one has said that the disciples had to 
wait ten days, and that there were ten days 
in which they were being filled with the 
Holy Ghost. That is a mistake. They 
were not waiting ten days to be filled; 
they were waiting to be emptied. Dr. 
Gordon has reminded us that the wind 
always blows toward a vacuum. If you 
could exhaust the air from this great tab- 



24 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

ernacle to-night, and then could make a 
crevice in it, you would hear the wind 
come whistling in. And so, in that upper 
chamber, the disciples were being emp- 
tied and a vacuum was being made. The 
son of thunder was emptied of the thun- 
der, that he might be filled wuth love. 
The doubting Thomas was emptied of his 
doubt that he might be filled with light. 
The presumptuous and vacillating Peter 
was emptied of his presumption and his 
fickleness that he might be filled with all 
the power of God. And then there came 
the sound as of a mighty rushing wind, 
and God came upon them and used them. 
A great mesmerist told me one day 
that the one qualification under which 
he could mesmerize people was that they 
should have vacant minds. If a man 
might pour his mind into the vacant 
mind of another creature until he should 
think his thought and do his will, what 
might not God do if only He could have 
vacant spirits into which He could pour 
Himself. The great condition of power 
is to be emptied of self and to be filled 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 25 

with God; to renounce self and to appro- 
priate God; to be dead unto self but to 
be alive unto God by the power of the 
Holy Ghost. "God has chosen the foolish 
things of this world to confound the 
things that are wise, and God has chosen 
the weak things of this world to con- 
found the things that are mighty, and the 
base things of this world and things that 
are despised hath God chosen, yea, and 
things that are not, to bring to naught 
things that are." "Things that are not,'' 
hath God chosen. That was why He 
chose Jesus Christ, who "made himself of 
no reputation," and became obedient un- 
to death, as he humbled himself; there- 
fore, hath God highly exalted Him, and 
that is the only way that God will ever 
exalt any one of us. It was only when 
Luther could say: "Martin Luther does 
not live here: Jesus Christ lives here," 
that God could use Luther. And it was 
only as Paul could say: "I am crucified 
with Christ, nevertheless I live, and yet 
no longer I, but Christ liveth in me" 
that Paul could be used of God. It is 



26 POWER FROM ON HlUn. 

only as you and I can say the same that he 
can use us, even in the faintest degree. 
I used to pray for power. I thank God 
that I never pray for power now. I used to 
pray for power alone, and then, I prayed 
for power with humility, and then, for 
power througli humility; but I thank 
God that I came to learn at last this 
one thing, that the only pra3'er that touch- 
es power will be the pra3''er that says: 
"Thy will be done in me, even as it is 
done in heaven." The place of privilege 
where we can say: "God is mine," is 
only where we can say: "I am His;" 
and we cannot truly say : "Whom I serve, " 
until we have said: "Whose I am." Let 
God take us; let us be willing to do the 
will of God, and He will lead us to a 
mighty faith. And when you shall come 
to that place where you seek not your 
own, but where your heart is set on God 
and where the eyes of God as thej^ run to 
and fro throughout all the earth shall see 
you, then there shall come to you the 
mighty power of an appropriating faith 
until you shall reach up and take hold on all 



POWEk FROM ON HIGH. ^7 

the fullness of God. You will be God's; 
God will be yours; all that there is of 
God will be poured into you — nothing 
held back — nothing of wisdom, nothing 
of love, nothing of tenderness, nothing of 
power — all will be yours— all things, 
whether Paul or Apollos or Peter or the 
world or life or death or things present 
or things to come, all will be yours; and 
you may go forth without one particle of 
hesitation to do as the one of old did in 
the power of the Holy Ghost, "to be set 
over kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, 
to destroy, to overthrow, and to build and 
to plant. " 

Some of you have seen the great picture 
that was painted by Muncakszy of the 
Christ. That picture was being exhibit- 
ed in Canada, at Toronto, I think, and 
there came a rude, rough, wicked sailor 
to see it. He entered the room at the 
time of day when there were no others 
there; and paying his money to the wom- 
an who sat inside the door, he came in 
and stood for a moment, looking at the 
canvas as though he would glance at it 



28 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

and go away. But as he looked, he could 
not turn. He stood there with his eyes 
fixed on that central figure of majesty and 
love. In a few moments, he took off his 
hat and let it fall upon the floor. After 
a few moments more he sat down upon a 
seat, and then he reached down and picked 
up a book that described the picture, and 
began to read ; and every few seconds his 
eyes would turn toward the canvas and 
toward the figure of Christ. The lady 
who sat by the door saw him lift up his 
hand and wipe away some tears. Still he 
sat; five, ten, fifteen, sixty minutes went 
by, and still the man sat there as though 
he could not stir. At last he rose, and 
coming softly and reverently toward the 
door, he hesitated, to take one last look, 
and said to the woman who sat there: 
"Madam; I am a rough, wicked sailor; 
I have never believed in Christ; I have 
never used His name except in an oath; 
but I have a Christian mother, and my 
old mother begged me today before I 
went to sea, to go and look at the picture 
of the Christ. To oblige her I said I 



^^ 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. Ctg 

would come and I have come. I did not 
believe that anybody believed in Christ; 
but as I have looked at that form and that 
face I have thought that some man must 
have believed in Him, and it has touched 
me, and I have come to believe in Him, 
too. I am going out from this time to be 
a believer in Jesus Christ and a follower 
of His." Oh, beloved, as I heard that 
story, the tears came unbidden to my 
eyes, and my heart glowed with a mighty 
longing. I thought if a poor, weak man, 
living himself in a godless land, could 
take his brush and preach on canvas, 
and cause our Christ to glow upon it, 
until a rough, rude, wicked, licentious 
man should be won to believe in Him, 
what might not my God do if he might 
paint Christ in me — nay, if he might 
reproduce Christ in a human life, that 
the life might be Christ's and that men 
might come to believe on Him. 

Dr. Field has given us a picture which 
has been oft repeated, of the lighting of 
the torches in the holy sepulchre at Eas- 
ter time. The building is crowded ; I sup- 



30 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

pose, by a thousand or more of the mem- 
bers of the Greek church. The patriarch 
comes. All is darkness; but they make 
wa}^ in the throng as he passes through. 
He goes through the curtain, into the 
place where the body of Jesus is sup- 
posed to have lain, and waits. Not a 
word, not a sound, scarcely a breath; a 
full liour passes by, and the breath- 
less throng wait there in the great dark- 
ness. Suddenly there is a movement. 
Suddenly they see a spark, and out comes 
the patriarch from the sepulchre, out from 
the darkness, bringing with him light, a 
torch that is lighted. Instantly there are 
a hundred hands stretched out for it, and 
they take the torch and pass it from hand 
to hand; torches are stretched out until 
they reach it and are kindled from it, un- 
til a thousand torches burn with the light 
that comes from the tomb of Christ. Out 
into the streets of Jerusalem, out into the 
highways and byways they go, and other 
torches are lighted from theirs until the 
whole land glows with the fire that comes 
from the tomb of the Savior. In these 



POWER FROM ON HIGH. 3I 

closing moments let me ask you to come 
with me into the place of the death of Jesus 
Christ. May God kill the ambition in us, 
the selfishness, the pride, the world in 
us, until we shall be crucified with Christ. 
May the very One that laid in that sepul- 
chre light our torches to-night and hold 
His torch out to this great throng until 
the light of God and the tongue of fire 
shall touch you, and you, and 3^ou, and 
you, that w^e may go out into the streets 
of this city and into this great state and 
along these rivers and the iron highways, 
to the north, the south, the east, the west, 
to Maine, to California; to Texas, to Can- 
ada — nay, until we go across the sea to In- 
dia, to Africa, to the isles of the sea, and 
the whole world shall be touched with the 
light of God and the fire of Pentecost 
from the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
The death of self and the life of God I 
pray may come unto us now, and as we 
go, let us go with bowed heads, saying 
reverently: "Not unto us, not unto ns, 
but unto Thy name give glory," "it is not 
by might, not by power, but by Thy Spir- 



n 



32 POWER FROM ON HIGH. 

it," 0)1, Thou Lord of Hosts, and as we 
go, let us go with uplifted hearts, sing- 
ing our doxology, "Thine is the kingdom, 
and the power and the glory, forever and 
ever. Amen. " 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 789 323 3 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 789 323 3 



